


ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν | to abstain from doing harm

by ProwlingThunder



Series: The Everlasting List of Shenanigans [225]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Accordo Culture, Chapter 9 Spoilers, Collateral Damage, Eos Religion and Theology, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Medical Procedures, Medically Unsound Things, Medicine, Niflheim Culture, Soldier Microculture, Soldiers, Soldiers of Many Backgrounds, Spoilers, Tenebrae Culture, Tenebrae Soldiers, The Astrals Are Dangerous, damage control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:47:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21233042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: The Hippocratic Oath includes the promise "to abstain from doing harm" (Greek: ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν). It is the oath of ethics historically taken by new physicians, who swear by a number of healing gods to abide by them.Nicias isn't really that kind of doctor. Or this kind. But Altissia doesn't know what it's in for if the Leviathan wakes, so he has to try.





	ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν | to abstain from doing harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neopilot00](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neopilot00/gifts).

> Tags to be added as fic progresses.
> 
> Watch me fake culture, religion, topography, geography, and anything else I can fake. Charge!

When his tour in Niflheim had led him close enough, and he'd had sufficient leave accrued from the army, Nicias had gone to the frozen ruins of Ufahver to pay his respect to those who had lost their lives there.

It hadn't been an easy trip. For one thing, the switch that led down into Ufahver may have still existed, but it had been disabled because the tracks themselves had been destroyed during the Frostbringer's Waltz. The elevated station still existed and was occasionally utilized as an emergency stop, but that close to Her corpse, the freight elevator there was usually frozen in place. Whether or not the shaft was even intact was an entirely separate matter; why would anyone have to utilize it, when the memorial was built on the elevated station in the first place, and no one living remained in Ufahver?

But there had been a separate memorial for those willing to make the pilgrimage, down in the ruins beneath the overhang of Shiva's once vibrant form, now a lifeless tombstone for a mass grave. That was where Nicias had wanted to go, and he had hired a guide for it. Dalibor had been one of more than one hundred and sixty thousand full time residents of the city, away visiting distant family for a wedding during the Waltz. In the times that followed, he had remained a stubborn caretaker of the station and memorial, unwilling to budge again from the place he had called home.

Nicias had been glad to have him at his side. Growing up in Tenebrae had not done wonders for his ability to navigate snow and ice, and without Dalibor at his side, Nicias may have lost all his fingers and toes.

But visiting Ufahver on leave was very much not the same thing as a posting to Altissia.

For starters, Ufahver was _ not _ the Frostmound, Shiva's ancient and enduring resting place and the seat of her power. Ufahver was just the place she had Fallen, creating a widespread glacial storm in the center of the continent and throwing the seasons entirely out of place, giving birth to three new categories of medicines and a great many dozen different diagnoses not just to Ufahver's initial survivors but everybody in the surrounding territories, as the cold spread and raged, trapping whole swaths of the continental population in inescapable frozen graves.

Placed into perspective, Ufahver was to the Frostmound what the _ Ile d'Oleron _ was to the Siren's Deep. That is, _ not there. _

“Why canals?”

Standing on the streets of Altissia next to Nazaire, Nicias rather wanted to be a bit like _ Ile d’Oleron _himself. “I’m not sure. Maybe just an abundance of the resource?”

“I guess they do have enough of it,” Nazaire mumbled, shooting an uncomfortable look at the waterways.

Nicias couldn’t blame him. The surface of the ocean here looked clean and calm both, but he didn’t think anyone from home would find comfort in _ this much _ water. Giant rivers, sure; Tenebrae had them in spades. Vallibus Amnes, the Valley of Rivers, was a center inlet where dozens of them in all sizes converged upon one another, blooming a great many rare plants. But on all of them there was the comfort dry land on either side, close enough to see if not to touch, and even the youngest of children learned to aim for them in swift waters. How did one do that on the ocean? What did they aim for? No one lived on the beaches in Tenebrae. Why would they, when the mountains were _ right there? _

“It could also be artistic?” he offered, despite being pretty sure it wasn’t. Water was what they had. Salt and regular irrigation would keep still-water sickness away, as well as most bacteria, and in the meantime the regular maintenance and upkeep of the canals was probably a source of cultural pride. They had probably used up all the real land they had in their possession too, just for the foundations of the buildings and streets. There wasn’t enough for roads, and importing stone or wood may have been an expense they couldn’t afford when there was a cheaper alternative to be had. They did similar things in medicine, sourcing local remedies when pharmaceuticals were too far away to provide a patient immediate relief. “On the part of the designers and craftsmen.”

Nazaire groaned, the sound of a man who would rather be dying. “Please don’t help them. This city is a structural nightmare.”

Nicias made an encouraging sound, then gamely tacked on, “How so?” and let the architect begin to rant about the value of lattice-structure versus columns, city blocks and ground anchors and dozens of things he didn’t understand.

He was thinking more about floods, himself.

Captain Faure had told them to be on the lookout for weaknesses that might need to be guarded, if things went from bad to worse here. Prince Ravus, according to the whispers, had gone ahead to warn Altissia’s President and request an audience with his sister, but after the disaster with Titan at the Disk of Cauthess-- another place Nicias never _ really _ wanted to go-- and the destruction Ramuh had done on Niflheim’s bases in the Lucian mainland meant that there was a very real possibility that the rest of the Six would wake up as well.

_“I know we all want leave, but Altissia sits atop Siren’s Deep.”_ Captain Faure had been fairly grave about the dismissal, earlier, even if they were all in civis and waiting for permission to get off the ship and into the city. “_His Highness doesn’t want another Ufahver, and neither do we. So I need all of you to be figuring out something we can do about it. His Highness can’t be everywhere at once, and Her Majesty has more important things to do. Look out for the best spots for a dropship to land for evacuations, what buildings might hold up for refugee stands. We don’t know how bad it’s going to be, so we need to prepare for the worst we think and then expect it to be ten times worse than even that. Remember, our benevolent overlord’s idea of dealing with this is going to be to send in MTs,”_ he had added unnecessarily, just in case they had forgotten that unfeeling machines made up the bulk of Niflheim’s army.

Nicias hadn’t. He had been thinking about it ever since his ticket had come up, the lack of living, breathing human beings in the army. Every country gave up its volunteers when Niflheim requested more soldiers; some more willingly than others, of course, but they all gave them up one way or another. He hadn’t really had a prayer, himself. The Bonheur hadn’t been important enough to protect their only son from a warzone, and unfortunately any kind of medical expertise was enough to single him out. Doctors, it turned out, were in dire need in the arms, and they just simply didn’t volunteer.

Not that the bulk of Niflheim’s soldiers volunteered. Fabricated soldiers with no compassion or empathy, steel pistons and wires instead of muscle and bone, created on an assembly line. Nicias was so used to seeing them that the lack of them on Altissian street-corners was both a comfort and downright uncomfortable; thus far, they had been spared heartless watchers, and the culture was rich and fearlessly innocent for it.

He was, perhaps, a little jealous of them.

“And it’s not like there’s much in the way of infrastructure to repair anything if their canals _ do,” _ Nazaire was still ranting. Nicias wouldn’t admit that he had missed most of it, but he doubted that would have mattered much to Nazaire, and he didn’t really understand the upset anyway. “It’s not like they can get a crane-barge up on there, it’s barely big enough for a gondola and you have to climb stairs to get there!”

“They could always use the lower canals for that,” Nicias suggested, though he glanced at the waterways surrounding the city blocks and suspected they likely couldn’t handle a barge either. 

"If their cranes are big enough," Nazaire grumped.

“If their cranes are big enough,” Nicias agreed. “Even still, we’re not here for canal repair.”

It seemed like a silly thing to have to remind Nazaire of, but the reminder worked, at least. Nazaire dropped green eyes from the boat-lines to look at him, then cut his gaze sideways; acknowledgement and apology all at once. “A lot of the buildings are pretty solid. I can’t say anything about the foundation… if we want to set up aid stations we need to large spaces, so none of these blocks are going to do it. Altissia’s packed with people,” Nazaire mused, throwing a look out at the crowd they walked through, “We have to assume they will all need everything we have.”

Nicias looked, too. Altissia’s biggest trade was that of culture and tourism; it wasn’t a fishing or port town. Accordo’s capital was full of people from every part of the world, here on work or vacation or any number of reasons, such as they themselves, here on request from the Prince to see if they could mitigate the damage that was coming. There was nobody familiar in the crowds; the entire contingent had spread out in groups of twos or threes, to do their jobs and relax both, and Altissia was a massive city.

He didn’t have much of an ability to look around and guess where anybody was from, looking at a person. But he didn’t need to, to know the locals had weathered storms mainlanders had never seen, the same way those from Tenebrae survived hellish winds that had often sent their Niflheim overlords in a panic, funnels trapped between the mountains, tearing up the world like claws of angry dragons.

This close to an Astral, Altissia probably experienced natural phenomena even more alarming. He wondered how they dealt with it, if they were even aware that they were dealing with _ something. _ “They must have an emergency response themselves. Hospitals, storehouses…”

“You think this place has _ storehouses?” _ Nazaire repeated, baffled.

Nicias reached up to run his hand over his scalp. It sounded silly, even as he said it. He eased out of the current of people, gently pushing Nazaire to the side. A small cafe stalled between a pair of larger stores, all part of the same physical structure. The special of the day was scribbled on a chalkboard as _ Espadon Frit Et Baies De Mer, _ some sort of skewered meat and fruit, and he bought a few for them. There was no reason to try to plan on an empty stomach.

Altissia was in a fairly temperate zone, but he hadn’t seen a terrible lot of fishing boats yet. It was possible the fishing happened in a different part of the city, away from areas where tourists frequented. He knew the city sprawled from the water and into one of the largest islands in the Accordian chain, but no one ever talked about touring there, so he could theorize that might be where they grew fruits and grains and some meats _ not _ taken from the ocean. Human beings couldn’t live off just fish alone, could they?

“Storehouses would be further inland,” he guessed, taking their meal and making his way over to a small table with a trio of stools pushed up underneath it. Nizaire followed without protest and sniped one of the skewers as soon as they sat down. “Away from the tides. Maybe safe from the wrath of the Astrals, too. Even Fenestala has storehouses.”

“Alright,” Nizaire huffed, grudging. “Maybe they do have storehouses. But if they’re on the island, they’re no good to us. What about the arena?”

“What arena?”

“The Totomostro arena?” Upon seeing his blank look, Nizaire continued. “Totomostro is where they set beasts and daemons to fight it out. People bet on it all the time. Arena Galviano, the colosseum where it’s held, is supposed to be one of the oldest structures in the city, and it’s one of Altissia’s main attractions.”

Nicias resisted the urge to cradle his skull. “People bet on death tournaments?”

Nizaire nodded. “It used to be people in the arena, I heard, back before Niflheim treated with Accordo. It’s an outlawed practice now, fighting in there, but there’s no law that says a ronin can’t slay arachne.”

“You cannot seriously be considering betting on daemon fights.”

“It’s a lot better than fighting animals. At least daemons taking each other out cuts our work out for us,” Nizaire grinned, as if he thought it was truly a good thing. Nicias didn’t.

“Didn’t Accordian tradition used to sacrifice humans to the Tidemother?”

The change of topic made Nizaire blink, but he nodded. “Yeah. Why?”

“How did that go?”

Nizaire shrugged. “It was usually criminals. The condemned would be chained up on the Altar of the Leviathan, and depending on the severity either left there or they’d cut their wrists, so the Leviathan could taste their blood, because Blood could tell. But if there was a quarrel on who was really guilty, they’d have blood duels in Galviano…” Nizaire trailed off, face pale and eyes wide.

Nicias closed his eyes and imagined it.

Blood duels in the arena. Human blood, bright with oxygen and staining sand or dirt, maybe, but not likely-- more likely metal grates that drained into the ocean, copper mixing with salt, drawing predators. But there were no more humans in the arenas, just beasts and daemons.

Yet daemons still _ bled. _

Tainted, poisoned, _ infectious _ blood, draining into the Tidemother’s waters.

“Sweet Stormbringer…”

“I don’t think the Stormbringer’s going to be enough if they wake Her up.”


End file.
